Saturday 12th April: A Ghostwritten Game of Go

I had expected to squeeze in a little bit of mahjong in April, but it is not to be, neither in April nor during Golden Week as the Great Spotted Hostage-To-Fortune is off on a study weekend and the Poor Little Cypriot is to be left to hold the jolly old fort and keep an eye on the Lesser Spotted Hostage-To-Fortune. The latter is not yet of an age at which the finer points of the game of mahjong are fully appreciated. Mahjong is about more than knocking down walls. 

The PLC anticipates a return to the tables on the second Friday of May, at least as things stand at the mo', things which are notable for not standing still for more than a passing day or two without drilling a hole in ones anticipations.

But if mahjong is in abeyance due to circum- stances beyond our control, the noble game of igo has resurfaced on the Saturday afternoon agenda after a long period of submersion beneath the exigencies of pedagogy, or rather the exigencies of imminent poverty caused by, among other things, playing late and poorly at mahjong on a Friday night, which then required several hours of pedagogy on a Saturday to redress. Just now, not only has Friday night mahjong been curtailed but so has Saturday afternoon teaching as the "academic" year at DEH finished a couple of weeks ago. It appears that the services of the PLC might not be needed any more, in which case the bitter cup of imminent poverty may be sweetened with a regular dose of victory over that old cove Ardle at the igo board in a certain coffee shop in Hiroshima of a Saturday afternoon. 

The hymn-writer, Cowper, put it a little differently, but the intention is similar in all essentials and proves that the sentiment of Schadenfreude is compatible with the sensibility of a good Christian:

"His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower."

Unfortunately, however, it cannot be said that Old Ardle's purposes ripen very fast at all. It takes him about an hour to unfold his next move and place a stone on the board. When he does move, he moves in a mysterious way and leaves me wondering about his performance. 

Take last week's game in which Ardle was white and the PLC black; think of Poland circa October 20th 1939 and you shall have the situation in a nutshell. (Ardle = Poland).

This week's game had a more promising look about it at the beginning - in the sense that it actually resembled something approximating a game of igo such as you see being played by the wizened old geezers who hang around the gents bogs in Peace Park, Hiroshima. This time, Ardle was black, which meant he was Germany, but by the time we reach the last photo, i.e. about six hours after hostilities had begun, we will more quickly grasp the situation if we think "April 1945." Roosevelt has just died of boredom and the Volkssturm are strapping their Panzaerfausten to their Fahrrade.

Fortunately, I had turned up well equipped to cope with the procrastination of Old Ardle, videlicet, armed with a copy of David Mitchell's Ghostwritten, which, I must confess, I am only now, nine years after it was first published, poking my beak into. 

And as beak-pokings go, a jolly spiffing poke of the beak it was too. Old Ardle could fiddle as much as he liked as far as I was concerned, because I was thoroughly enjoying a book I had not expected to be my cup of tea at all.

So who is this David Mitchell chap?

David Mitchell was, once upon a time, in the years of our careless bachelorhood (a frolicsome time in which any foreign bachelor in Japan worth his salt would consider himself a thoroughgoing dokushin-kisoku), David Mitchell was, I say, a fellow toiler at the chalk-face here in Hiroshima, one of an innumerable and indifferent host of foreign idlers whose conceit is to dream of writing some fascinating tome or other and breaking into the world of publishing, but who find it more convenient, or necessary, for the time being, you understand, to earn their bread "teaching" English in the sanguine expectation of something turning up. 

Incidentally, David Mitchell would never write a sentence like the previous one. His sentences, at least if we are to take the first chapter of Ghostwritten as representative of his oeuvre, are pared down and go more like this:

• I lay down and wept.
• The rat in the box had died.
• My sword I keep drawn.
• My palms have become sundials.
• Cars rusted in the sweltering heat.
• I turned around and blew a raspberry.
• I did it again.

Anyway, when news broke a few years ago that an English teacher based in Hiroshima - in Hiroshima! - had just published a book, no, not merely a book but A NOVEL no less, and one that was getting rave reviews, the reaction among many in the know about the Hiroshima scene was as incredulous as Nathaniel's when he swung around and said,

Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?

Apparently, it can.

David Hurley

http://japanese-mahjong.com

Jaime Ties The Knot

It is Monday morning, and I think I have recovered. Thursday, Friday and Saturday were spent celebrating Jaime's wedding. Activities included golf, bowling, mahjong, cigars, booze, the wedding ceremony itself and the reception at the Rihga-Royal Hotel, and parties at three bars: Kembys, Kulcha and Plasir, as well as regular trips to the sauna and bath-house to recover from one event and prepare for the next. 

The only activity that seems to be missing from the list is football, but the chief players of the DEH team showed up in force at Plasir and the young, skillful and good looking bachelors (i.e. the Japanese players) swiftly attracted the attention of the several attractive young women who were there ostensibly for Jaime & Sawako's nuptial celebrations, but mostly, it seems, to find themselves some young, fit, handsome Japanese bachelors...

A party of four headed up to Forest Hills Golf Club on a rather parky Thursday morning. The party consisted of Jaime, Tim (Jaime's friend from Barnsley who flew out to Japan to join the celebrations), Flynn (Jaime's 11 year old nephew), and David.

Here's a photo of Flynn just after topping his ball off the tee of the 13th, a par three hole with water on one side and a snow-filled bunker on the other side guarding the approach to the green. Flynn was playing his first ever game of golf, with a set of lady's clubs several sizes too big for him. In topping the ball he sent it straight between the obstacles and up onto the green where he potted it for his first par score. 

David did not bother to search among the trees for his ball, one of about twenty-five which went awol off the tee during the course of the day. Instead, he plopped another one of his diminishing store of balls onto the rough on the other side of the water to tap it onto the green for three, plus four putts before the wretched thing deigned to drop into the hole, for a score of seven. It was that hole (plus some creative counting, plus a whole series of dreadful scores) that sank David to bottom of the pile and enabled Flynn to claim his first adult scalp on a golf course!

However, in the first part of the evening entertainment, both Flynn and David were bested at the bowling by Connor, Flynn's younger brother.

After that the men headed over to Kemby's for Jaime's stag party. Kenyon and David took some time out of the party to show a chap called Rodri how to play 3-player mahjong and introduce him to the mysteries of the mechanical table. Rodri just happened to be passing through Hiroshima as part of a five-month world tour, and just happened to play mahjong back in England. Kodama was shut so we headed over to "Freelando" for a half-hour game consisting of three hands, the last of which was won by Rodri, who then had to rush back to his hostel before the gates shut at midnight.

Back at Kemby's it was time to move upstairs to Lone Ranger bar for cigars and whisky. At some stage Alex arrived and announced that he was opening up Kulcha for the rest of the night, so over there we all went - despite my resolution to fall into a taxi after Kemby's... Still, at least when I did finally get a taxi I didn't fall out of it as did Jaime's brother-in-law out of his.

We eased into Friday with a bath and sauna at 5pm and a quiet game of mahjong. Noda, Kenyon and David played three games before Jaime joined us for the fourth, with English and American Tim in attendance. 

The game followed recent form, with Noda and Jaime winning, David and Kenyon struggling. At first David looked like he would be the only sinker, but then Kenyon took over and sank swiftly while David managed a last game recovery. 

Jaime's game saw him enjoying some wedding luck and it concluded with an auspicious score of +13, his "lucky" number.

Noda +26, +21, +78, -27 = +98

Jaime --, --, --, +13 = +13

===

David -36, -20, -7, +35 = -28

Kenyon +10, -1, -71, -21 = -83

It had been hoped that Neil would be in town in time to play a game or two, but his arrival was delayed and by the time he got here the players had all agreed that an early night would be good and left when Noda did.

Finally, here is a pic of Jaime and Sawako on their way back down the aisle of the open-plan wedding chapel at the Rihga Royal on Saturday 16th Feb. Congratulations!

Jaime and Sawako's wedding, Rihga Royal Hotel, Hiroshima

Mid-August: A Duffer's Preparation at Mitaki Golf Centre

I have learnt to love the Mulligan rule in golf. It has enabled me to claim that my golf is getting better. By batting from the yellow tee with a liberal application of "the Mulligan", I have been able to whittle my score down to a personal best of 138 over 18 holes.

It should also be noted that some diligent pre-match practice was indulged in by Jaime and myself at Mitaki Golf Centre.

Mitaki Golf Centre looks down upon the salubrious hillside settlement of Mitaki on the western fringe of Hiroshima. We hauled our clubs up the hill to blast away at a liberal supply of balls on three afternoons prior to our recent game. We always opt for the "uchihoudai" option, which allows you to belt an unlimited supply of balls up the driving range.

• uchi - (v, t) (1) to hit (something inanimate); to strike; to beat (on something); (2) to type; to tap (e.g., a key); (3) to inject; (4) to indulge in gambling
  
  
• houdai - (n, n-suf) as much as you would like to

By virtue of the sheer volume of balls that we go through, the practice sessions, are productive of much sweat and industry, and even, it should be said, though perhaps not by myself, of progress in the art of belting little balls with long thin sticks over vast expanses of closely cropped grass.

As a result, I am now quite at home with the higher irons, from no. 9 down to no. 5. Heretofore, it had been a peculiar, indeed singular, circumstance of my brief and eventful golfing career that no matter what iron I chose, the ball, if I hit it, and by whatsoever trajectory the laws of ballistics would cause it to adopt, never appeared to travel farther than a ball that has received a hefty wallop from the trusty no. 9 iron, which was the first of the irons to bend its neck to my yoke.

However, by virtue of diligent application, and by gradually gaining the confidence to give my no. 5 iron a bit of welly on the downward swing it now appears that it can outpace the no. 9 for distance when everything else goes relatively well - videlicet, once in every four or five wallops or so.

There were two moments of pure farce during our three practice sessions. The first was supplied by Jaime.

Jaime was practising with his fairway driver when suddenly I heard a yelp of anguish. I turned around to see him poised at the end of what must have been a mighty swing, but holding aloft nought but thin air.

"It slipped out of my hands," he said. "It's gone over the roof. I might have killed somebody on the other side..."

I had to point out that its-going-over-the-roof was an utter impossibility since the roof jutted out about three feet beyond where we were standing and was about five feet above our heads. The puzzling thing was that the club was nowhere to be seen and nobody seemed to have noticed what had happened. Happily there were no cries of pain and outrage from the lower deck. So Jaime went off and searched for his errant club and it turned out that the club had flown off to his left, and landed to the side of the driving range out of harm's way.

The second moment of pure farce involved my driver and a rubber tee that is attached to a weight by a piece of old string... The purpose of this device is to offer a higher tee than the golf-ball-dispensing-machine can provide.

The golf-ball-dispensing-machine is itself a creaking electronic contraption into which you pour a bucketful of balls and have them delivered to your tee one at a time - in theory at least. If you take too long teeing up your shot, a second ball comes rolling out and knocks the first ball off the tee. Or, no balls emerge at all. It always seems to be my machine that suffers a blockage. I am forever rummaging around with my balls trying to get them to flow down the nozzle. At one point the whole machine packed up and I had to resort to the failsafe computer-salvaging technique of unplugging it from the mains and immediately plugging it back in when nobody was looking.

Anyway, back to rubber tees...

You stick your ball on top of a four or five inch high rubber tube and whack it with your driver. The rubber tee is attached to the weight to stop it flying away. That, at least is the theory. It so happened that when I took an almight thwack at my ball with my driver I felt that certain frisson of impact at the bottom of the swing that is indicative of the club head having hit, or sailed through, its target point. However, when I opened my eyes, I saw my ball quite contentedly sat at my feet. The rubber tee was nowhere to be seen. To be sure, the weight was still there, but the tee had disappeared into thin air as surely as Jaime's fairway driver had; the only difference being that I did not deign to go and search for it.

It had seemed to me until the third of our preparatory practice sessions, that everybody else who goes to Mitaki Golf Centre is competent at his game. I am happy to report, however, that our third session was something of a duffers' congress and I was by no means bottom of the class. Two lads occupied a couple of slots at the far end next to the mirror (where you can study your swing - a vanity in which I have not dared to indulge). Many of their balls ended up in the foliage to their right, several did not move at all, and one came whistling past my ears as I was teeing up what would have been a fine shot with the driver had I not been put off.

A couple of older blokes took the two places next to me but seemed keener on chatting and laughing than on practising - and it became evident why that was so when they did finally apply club to ball.

The good thing about a driving range is that you can get into a rhythm and blast ball after ball without too much trouble. Jaime sent numerous balls so far that they appeared as no more than specks of dust upon the horizon so we both had some justifiable cause to feel confident about our game at Forest Hills on Tuesday 21st August...

I shall expatiate upon the exigencies of that day's play, and upon the virtues of the Mulligan, in my next post.


David Hurley
japanese-mahjong.com
japanese-games-shop.com

Friday 17th August: Jaime Takes the Top Spot at "Ai"!

Three of us met at around 5pm in one of the best okonomiyaki shops in Yokogawa, a place called "Hyotan" in the CAZL shopping mall that leads from Yokogawa station to the Fresta supermarket.

I believe I have said it before, but I shall not disdain to say it again - the okonomiyaki is excellent! I went for my usual "nikku, tama, ebi, soba, chiizu" (meat, egg, prawn, noodles, cheese) combination. A good Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki comes with the ingredients beautfully integrated. It should be moist (the cheese is a great innovation in this respect). The chef did not let us down. We had never seen him before; the place used to be run by a couple of young guys - mind you, we've only been there at lunch time. According to the blurb on the CAZL website, Hyotan,

"is a can-be-happy shop in which the shop master of the smiling face is waiting with a light spirit."

I don't know if it is the same fellow, but he and his wife had eschewed any lightness of spirit and were slaving away putting out the ingredients of numerous okonomiyaki in anticipation of the evening's business. Still, as I say, the okonomiyaki was good. I asked him afterwards whether he'd been at the shop for long.

"Ah," he replied, "I haven't seen you before."

Yes, quite.

The reason why we had met in Yokogawa was because Jaime had seen a "new" mahjong parlour and we thought we'd try it out. However, when we went in it immediately became apparent that the place was probably one of the first institutions to have been opened in the post-war reconstruction of the city. The name of the parlour is "Ai", or "Love".

There had at some stage been an ill-conceived attempt to smarten the place up with a few licks of paint. Sadly, the renovator had thought it appropriate to paint the framework of the mahjong tables a fetching shade of grey. The application was no less flawed than the conception; dribbles of paint had been allowed to run until they dried down the sides of the table. I did attempt to capture the horror of it on camera, but no photograph can do it justice.

The old couple who ran the place were friendly enough. Unlike the Mama at Kodama jansou, the Mama at Ai is also a player; she participated in a game at another table while the old man looked on.

Unfortunately, there is little positive to say about the quality of the snacks that they served with the drinks.

When we arrived there was one table active in the far corner. From time to time one of the old geezers would pause on his journey from the table to the bog to look over Jaime's shoulder and chuckle at the site of a foreigner and his eccentric (but effective - see score chart) play. He moved on and took a look at David's hand as he declared Riichi immediately after Jaime and chuckled even more when Jaime's somewhat dodgy 1-tile wait beat David's conventional 2-tile wait!

A party of younger office workers came in and indulged in childish attempts to "speak Engrish" to each other - of course, not to us - in loud high pitched voices, never stringing more than two assinine words together. Ten years ago they were doubtless those same kids who used to wait until Johnny Foreigner had walked by before shouting "Herro!" at his backside.

At the table, tonight was definitely Jaime's night. He was in positive territory all through. Mind you, by the end of the fourth game, although he was ahead, both David and Ray had each achieved "only winner" victories such that we went into the fifth game with everybody less than 30 points away from zero. Furthermore, in none of the first four games had Jaime got rid of his Yakitori tessera before the South round!

It was the last three games, all taken by Jaime, that turned the evening decisively in his favour and propelled him into first place in the Grand Accumulated Results Table.

Jaime was the only winner of the first game. Then David replied with an attack in the second game, but he blew a gasket after declaring Riichi on a 3-6-9-Coins wait by not noticing that he needed a 9! He picked it up, threw it and immediately realized his error - Chombo!

That gaffe did for his evening! A while later Jaime took over as Oya with an almost empty tray. He survived two rounds, which caused problems as he had no sticks to rack up and so resorted to using his discarded Yakitori tessera. He then declared Riichi and had to make do with a mini-ersatz-salami sausage for a Riichi Tenbo. Needless to say, he went out and took 24,000 points off Ray!

The famous "Ray recovery" took place in the fourth game, but that was followed by a Chombo in the fifth. It had something to do with a late Pon of the White Dragon, but I forget exactly what.

Finally, in one of the late games David was in great danger of getting stuck with his Yakitori when Ray declined to go Ron on one of his discards since he was chasing a bigger hand, but gave David the breathing space to complete and finish the game by tossing his Yakitori tessera to one side with considerable relief!

I return now to the subject of ART by way of a detour through the mysteries of the bladder. Your bladder is something of an unpredictable fellow. One day your bladder will insist upon being emptied as soon as you look at a beer. Then, on another occasion, you'll find yourself on your sixth and not so much as a peep of protest from the old waterworks. I have not yet extrapolated any stats as to how all this relates to victory or loss at the mahjong table, but suffice it to say that Jaime was up and down like a yo-yo (and won) while David and Ray held steady (and lost).

Thus it was that Jaime returned from several trips to the bogola with reports of how a great work of art was rather oddly hung off centre on the back wall. It was a framed print of some flowers that had been stuffed into a vase of particularly odious a character and proportions.

Still Life in the Bogola

When David finally got around to making a trip to the bogola, he committed the faux pas of opening the unlocked door and walking in on one of the native players who was about his business.

Once the all clear had been sounded, David went about his rather different business, namely, the gathering of photographic evidence.

The question that concerned us was how it could come to be that such a monstrosity should have been painted and printed and sold and bought and then put up in such a position and in such a place. Perhaps it had something to do with that aesthetic sensibility for which the Japanese are renowned - all that to-do about wabisabi, you know, love of empty space and so forth.

I mean, somebody must have thought it good enough for the bog. Was it a gift foisted upon the propreitors? Did they feel obliged to put it somewhere? Or did they actually spend some precious mula on purchasing it?

These are deep profundities!

We come to the (nicely painted) hook. Who put the hook there? Why there exactly? Was the hook already there and simply provided a convenient place to hang the wretched picture? Or did somebody conceive of it as being the best location in the whole mahjong parlour for that particular work of art in the spirit of the afore-mentioned wabisabi and the deep appreciation of beauty for which, as we are told, the natives of these parts are so noted?

David returned to his seat furnished with the evidence, and also with a suitable excuse for his poor performance! It was the distracting concerns of Japanese interior design that took his mind off the game - of course!

Our verdict: an enterntaining evening but not a place high up on our list of mahjong parlours that we must return to...

Jaime +38, -25, +50, -34, +29, +28, +52 = +138
===
David -5, +51, -43, -28, +9, -12, -21 = -49
Ray -33, -26, -7, +62, -38, -16, -31 = -89


David Hurley
japanese-mahjong.com
japanese-games-shop.com

White Light/Black Rain - A-Bomb Survivors Speak

Steven Okazaki's film White Light/Black Rain: the Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could well be the most gruelling documentary I have ever had to sit through.

I attended the August 5th screening of the film (in English) at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Halfway through the screening and the sheer unplumbable depths of suffering that the survivors had gone through... no, are still going through every day of their lives, seemed to billow out of the screen like ectoplasm and suffocate the whole audience. The tension and discomfort was palpable. I doubt there are many who could watch every single second without flinching or averting their eyes. I certainly averted mine at that point in the film where the disfigured pulp around the eye socket of one poor wretch of a survivor is pulled back with some ghastly medical instrument.

Steven Okazaki has done both the victims of the atomic bombings and the modern world a great service by enabling a handful of survivors to convey to us something from the heart of the horror of what was inflicted upon them. Such is the strength and merit of this film that even for seasoned gaijin who live in Hiroshima and who have been to the museum, read the books, seen the documentaries and heard survivors' stories from our older students White Light/Black Rain retains all of its power to shock, revolt and induce pity as if we had never heard of Hiroshima before.

The reason for that, I think, is that the guts of the film consists of the survivors' testimonies. Steven Okazaki did not get in their way with his own political agenda. In an interview over on Twitch Okazaki explains:

"I have a problem with films about Hiroshima and Nagasaki—not that I particularly disagree with anyone—but, if I know everything’s going to be tailored, if everything I see is going to be in service to just telling us that war’s bad and bombs kill people, but not present us with a film experience, to get a sense of what happened, to get a sense of what people went through and to feel it, my feeling is it doesn’t really matter what the message is if it’s boring. My job is to tell the story and try to tell it in an interesting way so people will watch it."

The film opens with some interviews of young Tokyoites, none of whom seems to know what had happened in August 1945. "I'm no good at history," says one girl. "An earthquake?" volunteers another. However, it was pointed out to me that had they been asked "What happened in the twentieth Year of the Showa Era?" - the twentieth year of Emperor Hirohito's inglorious reign - then they might have recognised the date and responded appropriately:

"Ah so desu ne. The war ended not necessarily to Japan's advantage."

If the young be ignorant the government and people have been complicit. What emerges from the testimonies of the survivors is a story of discrimination and prejudice at the hands of the authorities and local communities. There is a feeling that the government is simply waiting for them to die. It is telling that NONE of the survivors who spoke in the film lives in Hiroshima today.

What then of the American voices in the film? Again, Steven Okazaki let them speak for themselves without forcing them to attempt to justify what they had been a party to. The most forthright of the speakers was the navigator of the Enola Gay, Theodor "Dutch" van Kirk, who has consistently defended the bombing; but it is worth mentioning that his most telling comment comes towards the end of the documentary when he affirms that anybody who had seen the bomb would not (as some "jerks" who have not do) idly advocate its use in America's petty wars around the globe.

Not the most horrifying or painful, but certainly the most squirmily uncomfortable moment was footage from This Is Your Life in which the co-pilot of the Enola Gay, Captain Robert Lewis meets the Revd. Kiyoshi Tanimoto from Hiroshima and his family who had been in Hiroshima on 6th August. The upbeat pace of the show clashes with the awkwardness of the situation. Yet, I have just discovered, the encounter had a profound effect upon one of the participants, Koko Tanimoto-Kondo.

There is much else to say, but much of it has been said elsewhere already and this blog entry has taken me far longer to write than any other; that is partly due to the severity and magnitude of the subject and partly because every time I seek out a name or a fact I end up riveted to the computer screen reading and reading deep into the night.

If you have the opportunity, make the effort to see the film. In the meantime here are some more links:

White Light/Black Rain - Background to the making of the film.

Time is Standing Still: White Light Black Rain - A good review complete with survivors' paintings.

Time Magazine - Theodore "Dutch" J. van Kirk

The Mushrooming Cloud - America in Denail about the Bomb.

You Tube - Steven Okazaki Interview

You Tube - White Light/Black Rain excerpts


David Hurley
japanese-mahjong.com
japanese-games-shop.com

Friday 24th November: 4 Chombo Shared by 2 Players!

Just as we were thinking about trying another mahjong parlour in Noda's absence the old boy signalled his return to Hiroshima by sending out enquiries about tonight's game so we agreed to return to Kodama.

And the evening was marked by Jaime's continuing revival despite a brief look at negative figures in the second and third games and by David's continuing decline and by Noda's recovery of form and by Kenyon's loss of form despite a brief look at positive territory in the third game.

The evening started with David tucking into his chow and giving away a foolish 1-Characters which also happened to be a Dora tile to Jaime - a Jaime wait if ever there was one, fiendishly designed to catch a chap out over his dinner...

Oh yes, and for pure entertainment value we ought to note that two of the players committed two Chombo each during the course of the evening, Jaime at the beginning and the end and David in the middle.

David had reverted to the "Oh-I'm-knackered-and-losing,-better-drink-as-much-as-I-can," strategy which, up to a point, has its merits but is also fraught with danger...

By the fifth game David had reached the depths so that he could hardly concentrate on the game at all but somehow or other the tiles seemed finally to come together while he was Oya and he declared Riichi - only to discover that one of the tiles he was waiting for - 5-Coins - was lurking in his discard row. Actually, he knew it was there but had misread his hand. Oh well, off we go again... David builds a remarkably similar hand and, certain of his wait, declares Riichi again - only to discover that he had plucked the 6-Coins instead of the 8-Coins from his hand to declare Riichi with, thereby rendering his hand null and void - Chombo!

However, in the last game David was again Oya and found himself building a promising hand that suddenly yielded fruit - another Riichi, this time which no mistakes... Tsumo, Suuanko!

That hand lifted David off bottom spot for the first time all evening, and dumped Kenyon into the mire.

However, with Jaime's continuing recovery refeulling his confidence, the bottom is now as tight as, well as tight as a very tightly shut sphincter indeed!

Jaime +33,* -37, -12, +28, +53, -16,* = +49
Noda -3, +49, -10, +6, --, -- = +42
===
David -30, -10, -12, +1, -36,** +55 = -32
Kenyon --, -2, +34, -35, -17, -39 = -59

*Chombo
**An unprecedented double chombo!

David Hurley
japanese-mahjong.com
japanese-games-shop.com